Category Archives: Developer

For the Developers

RIAGENIC is a UX/UI Business.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
4

It’s been a couple of months now since I went full time into focusing on growing a UI/UX business for myself. I thought I’d share my thoughts / notes and adventures along the way so far in the whole Microsoft UX/UI space as a freelancer.

Which are you? a developer or designer?

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How far we have come and yet how so little we have learnt! As someone who worked in/with the Silverlight/Expression teams to make sure the message that Microsoft has entered the UX space and that we’re essentially building a mutated Developer meets Designer and vice versa pixel ninja type person, the reality is people still need to put you into a category.

I often find myself torn between which side of that fence line I sit. As to be blunt i can do both, I know every single API inside Silverlight/WPF like the back of my hand, I can code in 9 languages outside of .NET and aren’t script kiddy languages either. I can do 3D and 2D design to the point where many have commented on my abilities here as being “eye for design” or “you are freakish good” but still i’m tormented by having to pigeonhole myself either category.

The reality is people aren’t ready to accept the person who can do both just yet and it takes a lot of proof to build trust that you can do both. I’ll let you know how I go with this journey over time but for now suffice to say, its new territory for me and yet still profitable as I can easily pick left or right and just swim in either pool where needed.

I need a UX guy urgently.

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I’ve seen this a lot in the past 8 months. I get called in at the last sprint or towards the end of a project and find myself having to triage features vs design vs engineering constraints. It’s the worst time to engage a UX/UI person(s) as in the end you’re asking for a Hail Marry – “can you make this UI look good and functional oh and don’t change the code base in the process?” is a common brief.

The trick I’ve learnt is that I can do it, it just takes a lot more patience and focus –, and you really need to know every single backdoor into Blend as well as the Silverlight/WPF API’s. IT is a challenge but can be a success   if there is enough time  and the communication is clear and expectations are set properly.

The bottom line is folks – Engage early and often. Even if its just 1 or 2hrs of their time per week or day, make sure you have someone in the room who bleeds UI/UX from the beginning of the project. Don’t engage late as the price will go up you won’t be able to salvage as much as you think by then  it’s not a UX consultation its just a pixel polish.

I don’t use Blend, just Visual Studio.

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You are breaking my design heart when you say this to me. Everybody right now who reads this open up Blend and pick a fight with it. If you take the time to get to know it and get to know it well, then when used right can help you out enormously with both Silverlight and WPF development. If you’re a person who likes to indent and keep their XAML neat, stop right now, you are trying to skate up hill.

XAML is not meant to be a hands-on language. It’s a common data format created to allow Design and Code tools to work against the same model without giving up their inherent capabilities. If you are editing it by hand just stop as you are not doing it right.

Pick a color any color.

The amount of times I’ve walked into an engagement and seen a rainbow of colors in the UI has left me thinking that it’s not so much a lack of will power around design it’s more the reality that not everyone is up to speed with color theory (there is a science to color selection).

The easiest tip I give people is this. Typically a brand has one or two colors that are used the majority of the time,  then they  will use white or black for the majority of the content depending on the background composition (white for dark, and black for light). When you design a User Interface for your next Silverlight/WPF project, pick one or two colors and create a ResourceDictionary called [ThemeName]Colors.

ColorePalette Then take that color and break into four shades (2x dark, darker and 2x light, lighter). Now then select what I call your chrome colors, these are the colors you would use for the outer chrome of your UI, in windows its typically around 4x shades of gray (light, lighter, dark, darker) and label them accordingly (i.e. chrmeAccent1, chrmeAccent2) etc. Keep your color naming conventions abstract (use camel or Pascal case – whatever lights your design candle).

Now don’t use any more colors. Lock that in and use these. Don’t deviate at all from this plan unless you have a designer person in the room who is held responsible for retaining the product/projects brand.

Lastly and this is the most important thing I can say to developers world wide:- Don’t use bold colors. Stick to pastel or light colors as you’re typically not ready for the hurdles that bold colors can throw at you. In saying this I did also notice that the MetroTheme that Microsoft has put into play has me a little nervous as it relies heavily on bold color scheming – which is great and cheap way of avoiding depth in a UI but at the same time creates a potential color scheming hazard around highlights vs lowlights and focal areas of your GUI composition.

Typography is also another concern of mine as too much reliance of ye olde text can put UI two steps back instead of forward – people don’t like to read in general, visuals often handle the workload – review the many articles available on “extraneous cognitive load” for proof of this.

MVVM that is all.

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I get that some of you want to get gung-ho with PRISM, MEF or your own framework. Bottom line is this, if you’re starting out and haven’t figured out the tricks and hacks just yet of WPF/Silverlight then you are better off  sticking to  simple MVVM. It handles 90% of your workload and doesn’t require you to learn  WPF/Silverlight and an extra layer of complexity at the same time.

Keep it simple, work to the idea that the code you write in the first year of WPF/Silverlight is code you will want to throw away or refactor later on. It’s natural you write bad code or work onto something that a year later you’ll look back on and proudly say “What was i thinking”. You’ve got your Microsoft UX training wheels on, embrace this openly and you’ll do just fine. Walk into a room and pretend you have it all under control and you’ll fold eventually as you can’t credibly hold that facade for too much longer.

If you can also check out AutoFac as well, this again will compliment your codebase nicely. MEF/PRISM are really for folks who have a team of engineers and are looking to build a complex mammoth size system – that’s the reality even if Microsoft try to deliver a different message  – I’m an ex Microsoft Product Manager so I can spin with the best of them :) hehe.

UI and UX are two different things.

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I need to say this out loud. If you ask someone to do UI, then they will do just that; focus on designing a user interface for an existing concept. If you need someone to wireframe and help you figure out how the whole user interface can be built, that’s where a UX person comes in. They are two different work streams just like a developer and a DBA are different.

You can find people who do both, but keep that in mind.

Oh, I need someone local.

Yes, having someone onsite is definitely a goal a team should always be on the hunt for. SCRUM teams etc benefit from this and it doesn’t need to be evangelized further. I will say however though, having someone working remotely can be just as effective especially a guy like me in Australia.

I say this, as at the moment I’m working on a project with Microsoft and it’s working out in our favor as while they sleep I work, while they work I sleep and we’re able to have a show & tell (i.e. remote stand-up) with one another where the design and development work can meet in the middle actually pretty well. As I’m able to say “ok here’s what I’ve done for you, its in your inbox when you wake up” and in the afternoons they’re able to go “ok, here’s what I need for you to start my day tomorrow” and so the cycle is a 24hr development run that works quite well.

It’s not for everyone but so far I’ve found  it works without any issues other than an expensive mobile/cell bill from my end lol.

Show me some of your work?

There’s a reason why painters and builders never work on their own house – same goes for me. This blog as weak as it looks is still the  front door  for my company – RIAGENIC. I need to get off my ass this month and put my site up but the problem I have is distilling what I do into a webpage that makes sense as I’m my worst client (picky, arrogant and will agonize over every pixel and paragraph in the site).

I also need to find  a way to promote me but at the same time associate myself with a brand, so that for me is a tricky marketing hurdle. I’ll soon see if I can pull it off! :)

Find people you can trust and don’t have to babysit.

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I’ve worked with a lot of developers in my time, nothing annoys me more than baby sitting incompetence. I’m fine with newbies learning the ropes, that I find far more rewarding as you’re working with someone who has passion and a determination to learn. It’s the people who are lazy and expect you to spoon feed them every 5mins on “how”. I didn’t learn Cinema4D by sitting next to a 3D wizard and ask “Ok so how do I write an xpresso script that makes the wheels rotate per frame”, I sat on Google and the objective was this “Find how to make wheels rotate in xpresso” and eventually I found it. Along the way I learnt a lot about Cinema4D and Xpresso as i was hunting for my answers.

If you work with me, I will set the benchmark high per person I meet, I will quickly assess your skill set and then raise the bar to challenge you to meet it as I do want to work with people who get it and are smart at what they do.

That being said, I love nothing more than coming into a cubicle of developers and feeling like I’m the newbie in the room as now I’m in learning from others mode.

At the moment I’m working with Joseph Cooney (one of WPF’s first MVP and of learnwpf.com fame). I’m learning heaps from interacting with this guy, and its a fun project at the moment we are on. I don’t have to babysit him and he doesn’t have to babysit me. We just looked at the specifications, agreed on a solution structure and boom, were’ off grinding pixels and code.

The next job I go to where they need a WPF/Silverlight dev etc, Joseph is one i’d recommend – again, its about networking and building relationships and finding people who you can trust and work alongside.

Reputation is a false economy.

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I often hear how folks worry over their reputation. I’ve watched people spend way to much time either building or recovering it from a bad project etc. The simple truth to this from what I’ve learnt is that if you know your work, you approach things with openly and honesty and don’t dump and run as well as admit mistakes, you’ll come out fine.

Just focus on doing good work, reputation has a habit of following and self regulating itself over time.

At times people I’ve heard bad things about on a project often aren’t the ones at fault as  the recruiter / business development sales person didn’t set expectations appropriately or the project was a train wreck well before this person arrived and they were the last ones to hold the steering wheel as it went off the road.

Agile/SCRUM is not a religion.

I’ve seen a lot of developers follow this concept by the book to the point where I often wonder if they are conscious of how badly they have gotten. The correct way and the natural way are two different things and in the end communication is the core piece to this.

Stop arguing over protocol and just focus on establishing a clear line of communication and work on getting estimations as close as you can while at the same time admitting to your fellow team mates the moment you can’t do something or are over on your estimate – just put up your hand and say a simple word – “help”. I personally work under the assumption I’m the dumbest guy in the room, it keeps me calibrated and if you work with me and think “geez i thought that guy knew all of this” that’s fine, but i probably do, but i’ll ask anyway just to make sure.

I’ve felt the wrath of a false hero before, and I ended up having to do his work and mine at the same time only to be burnt for it later on. I could of thrown this person under a bus and said “well actually it was his fault” but in reality, I just absorbed the blame and avoided working with this person since.

That is all.

Note: I am a UX/UI Ninja for hire.

Contact me at scott at this domain.

Related Posts:

UX Tip: Just because you can count change, doesn’t make you a mathematician

Posted on by Scott Barnes
3

I was watching a MIX2010 video from Microsoft’s head UX guru, Bill Buxton on how specifically developers and designers engage with one another. There was a throw away line he put out there, which was stated in reference to developers whom often think that because they have a bit of design muscle deep down that they too can contribute to the design discussion –

Just because you can count the change in your pocket, doesn’t mean you’re now a mathematician.

I laughed when I heard this as yes, design is an art (who knew) and often at times we take it for granted a lot more than we probably care to admit out loud.

For me personally, given I’ve visited countless developers in a variety of scenarios in the Microsoft space, one constant theme I see continues to emerge, developer art.  This consistent pattern is the exact fit for the above analogy.

Allow me to explain further..

Developer Art

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Developer art is the composition of a interactive solution that almost looks good enough to ship, but when you start to tease away at the various threads (i.e. DataGrids) you begin to see that there isn’t a lot of structured thought put into place behind the “Why” the screen is structured the way it is. In that, they often tell a story as to why it’s important to cram as many UI elements onto a screen making full use of all the pixels you are given and then some. It has certain hints of developer based design and structure but it comes across very adhoc and chaotic in thought.

“Oh yeah, I’ll add that button in later..”

I admire their intent (truly), but sadly this is really just re-echoing bad habits into a new medium and all we’ve really done going forward is polished the cumbersome UX and it’s attached pixels with a brighter gloss – the problem continues to live on though, and user’s are expected to jump through hoops due to poor software development planning and useless deadlines that in reality are more than likely going to increase the problem rather than decrease it.

Note: Most devs i’ve engaged with this, are aware of this as well, and are openly keen to get this fixed (very encouraging days ahead).

That being said, developer art tends to lead into Pixel Cramming –

Pixel Cramming

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Having a large screen is tempting to do a lot with, but in the end we must remember an important fundamental about humans, in that we like to chunk information into pieces that make sense to us. We listen to a story and isolate important pieces, in that we tend to skim read large documents and isolate important facts / figures. We often hear a story and isolate key pieces of information and bank that into our working and/or short-term memory.

Chunking is a clue to how your end users approach things in general, yet with developer art UI, it tends to be blatantly ignored. The reason being is, most of the time developers want to take a large resolution of pixels and fit as much data and finite amount at that, onto the one screen – because users like to analyse all of this data is usually the response I often hear.

I could inject countless research papers here on how humans + density = cognitive overload and the chances of recall and/or visual encoding are diminished as you layer more and more amounts of data. I don’t though as depending on how you deliver that message can lead to an emotive discussion focused around the words “I think”, less “I know” (which is really the base primitive used to instantiate an argument randomly.

Instead I come at it from another direction, that is asking the developer(s) to consider layering complexity.

Layer in Complexity.

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I often tell developers to start easy and then layer in density or complexity (as you learn more about your end users expected habits or paths of access).

I do this for a number of reasons.

Firstly it’s a sneaky trick I play on you, as it forces you to think about the big picture first from an end users perspective, whilst it then removes you from that pesky habit of getting bogged down in the finite details (engineers play chess with UI, they are always trying to guess 3 moves ahead).

Once you structure the surface of your UI in a way that mimics the way humans process information, you just may stand a great chance at producing some UI that doesn’t feel like a page out of the classified section.

Secondly, another reason as to why I ask you to layer in complexity/density is that it can help safeguard you from creating lots of virtual problems that probably don’t need solving. What I mean is that approx 80% of your end users are likely to only use 20% of your features, which in turn means that if you were to ship V1 as a very basic piece of software without the cascading density of UI you would in turn raise questions within your user base that are mostly likely going to yield you a lot of “I know” to questions that are probably coming up with “I think” today.

(Behind the scenes you are effectively doing an on the fly qualitative analysis on your said upcoming software’s development approach).

What If I were to come into your developer enclosure tomorrow, walk up to your feature task board and steal 30% of the features away from your product randomly. How would your end users react? I know how you’d react, but really, how would you’re end users react. Would they even notice it’s missing and if they did notice it was missing what story would they in turn tell you about why it’s important. Once they do tell you this information, and I only agree to give you half of the features back, how would you weight the importance against what you already have today done or still on the board.

My point, you do this anyway, you often start out with a healthy amount of feature requests, but through the inertia of development these features get squashed, contorted and at times glossed over in the development process. It’s a really negative impact on what started out with so much positivity.

Bottom line is this.

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Engage a UX Professional as well as a UI Professional, as in the end they think about these various points allot (at times both from different angles), and typically see the world for the chaos that it is and less inclined to care about you the developer (It’s not you, it’s not me either, it’s them, ya know, the end users). If you don’t already, do some persona development around your product and it’s important to do this. If you have done this, then grab some wall space and scrap book various clues about the end user for all to see. Remind yourself daily who it is your developing for and why. Ask yourself “Which person’s life am I going to ignite with this feature being done perfectly, done in an ad hoc fashion and/or not done at all”. You should have an answer to this with a degree of confidence that should be shared by all.

Does this mean all design is hands off to developers?

Yes and no, if you aren’t passionate about the concept of what design is, you really need to step back and let someone who is genuinely curious about solving problems for end users through interface design and less about shipping schedules or how brilliantly they orchestrated their MVVM architecture. As the ironic thing about development patterns is you’re building software to make life easier for developers to be apart of? funny, why can’t you do the same for the end users?

I’m not an expert, far from it, I’m just experimenting out loud with all of this, but the more I data I gather, the more I start to see how all these puzzles fit and all to often, developers are trying to be too many roles at once and well, humans are never really good at multi-threading – hence we chunk.

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Windows Mobile 7 the “meh” release.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
55

Look, I’m going to be that guy that doesn’t give a 100% positive review on the newest Microsoft toy, and its not that I hate its existence in favour of the iPhone (I honestly couldn’t care either choice), its for me a little bit of a disappointment.

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When I first saw the early specs of Windows Mobile 7 before I left Microsoft, i was little jaded with the whole level of commitment to the UX. As initially I’m thinking that this is just simply an extension to Zune, that the reality is it’s much cheaper and easier to take the existing work for Zune and bolt it onto the Windows Mobile OS. Problem solved move on, cheap, easy, effective and done.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but it for me is what I’d call a stabilize move and not a leap frog move. If the objective for the Windows Mobile 7 launch is to stabilize the bleeding, than the current iteration of the phone will do that and will do it in a way that will be declared a success. That is until the next generation of Apple comes off the assembly line and then the race is back on again.

The UX

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I think the UX is flat and is often obvious that the team are to busy trying to “own” their own UI and less about meeting a base benchmark. What i mean by this, is that it appears that the UI is trying a little too hard to do the opposite of the iPhone, like it’s a challenge they need to rise up against. Examples like no Icons, panning up/down instead of left / right for content etc seems to pack a little too much anti-iPhone. You can argue “we did a lot of research and 1 in 5 housewives preferred up and down over left and right”, which is meh, as I’ve seen how easily it is to manipulate usability to suit ones messaging (been there, done that, got the t-shirt).

I think sprinkling the Zune and mini-XBOX into the device will definitely grab peoples attention as i truly think the market is hungry for NOT an iPhone, so Microsoft may very well appeal to the folks who are bored with the iPhone as being this years fashionable technology must-have gadget.

That is until iPhone 4 comes out, and again i think this will raise the bar once again for Microsoft to meet and can they deliver? I think given the plain UX for the phone today, I think they stand a much greater chance of reacting to market conditions in a way that has low impact on development times as there’s less complexity in the room due to the over use of simplicity in the device.

Danger is, you’re left holding the current incarnation of Windows Mobile 7 and looking at the next generation of iPhone and go “aggh..i want that”, as make no mistake devices are really energising the “shiny object” buyers in today’s market.

For me, this is the Windows Vista launch, as after some code resets and downward pressure from above this is almost exactly the same internal conditions Windows Vista team had before their launch, “get it to market, get it fast and we’ll come back around for the bits we wanted to put in place”.

Apple are likely to react to this in a way that is going to be an interesting battle, as Apple is to iPhone as Windows is to Microsoft, so in a sense they are now fully engaged head to head with Microsoft once the device reaches the market.

Microsoft are playing hardball as well as you’ll most likely hear more about how Flash + Windows Mobile will play a role going forward and lastly they’ve yet to talk more deeply about how Silverlight 4 will play a role with the device as well (stay tuned for that, as this will get the developer propellers going).

In the end though, will this light up the soccer mums of tomorrow? probably, its new, it will be cheaper than the iPhone most likely and the Zune subscription model is quite palatable for the market. Zune Marketplace is where I think this device will live or die, if Microsoft gets the subscription model to work outside the US, then we’re in for a real threat to iTunes and iDevices world wide, as its definitely game on. The reason why Zune Market Place is a nicer approach is that its an appealing solution to Music/Movie piracy, as instead of people having to pay $$ for each individual song/movie etc, having a subscription model per month for all you can eat is less friction (especially for teenagers who can’t get access to credit cards)

Verdict.

I’d give the overall story an 7/10, I think the UX is weak and will face some challenges around usability, but overall the concept itself and how it ties in with other services from around the web is where it will most likely get its main momentum from.

Today, everyone is in the Microsoft “Zone” where its drink from the kool-aid, which is really an off signal response to a new products entry to the market. Two months from now, the reviews that are then talked about are the ones that are likely to stick and be consistent and they are truly the signal to the noise. This is where the Windows Mobile 7 team will need to bring their A-Game back and distil the message into  what’s coming next more so than what’s happened today.

Jokes aside, the UI still reminds me of Windows 3.11 where its very EGA 2D. is that good or bad? is it a design revolution where we kind of wind back the clock and go 80’s meets 2010, I don’t know. I do know I wanted more, I was hungry for more and i’m in a temper of a mood for not having my hunger satisfied.

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Will I buy one?

Yup. As I’ll do it simply because I’m a Silverlight / Flash UX guy and would love to tinker with a device that supports these two. Once again, Microsoft the engineering culture comes through and user experience takes a backseat.

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Context and Experience Matters.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
7

Hold your hats folks, I’m about to praise Adobe and yes I’m now a confused UX soul as a result of it.

What has got me all hot and bothered in the right way about Adobe, is the Adobe.TV site, as for me it just brought something to life in which I was often quite vocal internally in Microsoft about – contextual synchronization.

In fact, you can see the very deck I used a few years ago on the said subject and it was mainly focused at how stupid and silly Microsoft is with its constant “File->New” website approach. I not only was vocal internally but external as well – recently as last year being picked up by other sites such as Slashdot.org, Tim Andersons Blog  and InfoQ on the very subject.

Microsoft.com Usability broken.
View more presentations from MossyBlog.

(Note: Download the deck for full effect here)

 

Adobe have designed the concept where it appears folks who sign in are able to have the content react to their needs vs the end user reacting to Adobe’s needs. As a result, I think this will provide more signal vs noise to consumers of the content (hopefully) but the main thing for future planning around content is that I think it will put Adobe in a better position to see what areas they need to focus on the most. I say this as every time you the end user narrows your selection down,  you are essentially voting with your fingers on the said selection.

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I like this as they have broken the self-selection down into not just categories but also have managed to involve other filtering mechanisms such as “what others say” (ie Most Viewed, Highest Rated etc)

I have dreamt about this concept for quite some time and I hope that the Microsoft various website owners are paying close attention to it.

Why is this a good idea?

Firstly, when you onboard to any technology you face a multitude of challenges most of which is confidence. You need to have this sense of “easiness” associated to a new technology you are about to adopt, so it’s important that you’re not in hunt mode but more browse mode as fast as possible.

Once you are able to overcome confidence issues relating to the technology, you also need to keep focused on advancing along the adoption curve, as you want to build a better tomorrow as fast as you humanly can, but deep down you still want to keep cheating, by skipping over things you probably should pay attention to.

Skipping is important but at some point you will need to go back and and absorb the parts you just skipped, so you kind of need a way point mechanism in the way content is presented to you. In Adobe.TV case you can filter out the irrelevant areas that don’t appeal to you – YET. Tomorrow though you can pick this back up and run with it should you choose to, keyword being choice.

I call this contextual synchronization as the content is synchronized to your contextual needs.

Microsoft has a terrible footprint regarding content of this type, as if you were to look at Silverlight for example there are 4 sites all competition for your attention and that’s just for Silverlight. If You’re a .NET developer your world increasingly gets more and more complex and its hard to parse the information from each individual site, given it’s mostly narrative content and less about serving a contextual need. The ones that don’t focus on narrative are more along the lines of projecting information at you and less working with you and more to the point, there’s no instant reward/recognition approach to learning.

This is important with regards to confidence as if you get a sense of accomplishment for taking the time to adopt or learn something there in turn needs to be a mechanism in place that provides that visual feedback “Good job, keep going” mentality.

Adobe.TV doesn’t have this, but you could easily build on from here? you could add badges or rewards to the context above by outlining that the person is moving along nicely and here’s a T-shirt or something cheap and meaningful to show recognition to the end user for doing a great job at sticking it out.

One day I hope that my vision would come to life, but inside Microsoft there is such a de-centralized approach to the site ownership problem that it would take an act of Executive order to change this – even then it would likely take a few years to filter out externally.

Tim Anderson, a well known IT Journalist who gets paid to navigate the web soup such as Microsoft.com, stated this:

I use “web sites” in the plural because there are many Microsoft web sites. Perhaps there should be one; but as the referenced study observes, there are numerous different designs. There are different domains too, such as Silverlight.net, ASP.Netand so on.

Take my experience this morning for example. My question: how many processors are supported by Windows Small Business Server 2008? My Google search got me to here, an overview showing the two editions, Standard and Premium. I clicked Compare Features and got to here, which says I have to visit the Server 2008 web site to find out more about the “Server 2008 product technologies”. I click the link, and now I am looking at info on Server 2008 R2 – only I know already that SBS is based on the original Server 2008, not the R2 version. It’s not clear where to go next, other than back to Google.

The prosecution rests your honour.

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Future UX showreels.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
6

image There is something important you must do, in that if you are a regular reader of my blog and often read my rants about how UX this and UX that, then you need to get to the core of why I exist in this space.

Grab a beer, wine, Red Bull whatever your liquid of choice that kind of breaks you out of your mundane existence and sit down and watch the following videos. I guarantee you that if you’re not excited enough to crack open Flash, Silverlight, AfterEffects, Photoshop or whatever your software poison of choice is, then well, this space is simply something you’re not going to be great at – maybe good, but never great.

Warning: Do not sit too close to your monitor as drooling has been known to occur

(1) First

. Let’s do a lap around Mark Coleran’s private collection, I despise this guy’s talent and the constant opportunities he got to work on these projects and never once did he Skype me before hand asking for a chance to do them. *waves fist at Mark, damn you..daaaamn you!*..

Coleran Reel 2008.06 HD from Mark Coleran on Vimeo.

(2) Second

Microsoft has been slammed recently for lack of creative innovation. Look, its mostly true, the company does fumble a lot around this space but every now and then, they outsource to the right agency who manages to tell a story that exceeds peoples expectations of what the company is capable of. Microsoft Sustainability video by Oh, Hello in Seattle, is an example of this. If you suddenly don’t get all excited about Silverlight/WPF after this, then you’re just not into Microsoft.

(3) Third

This ones a local vision, but its from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). It’s there vision on how the future will look via the CBA. The comedian in me chuckles a little at the notion that if I ring the hotline i get an immediate answer from a bank manager, but, it’s not about that its about painting a vision and for that, I’ll bank with CBA. Would love to know which agency did this? (Anyone know?)

(4) Fourth

Back to Mr Coleran, he’s done it again that talented so and so  (UPDATE: Not Mark Coleran, its from Peter Menich and 27Forty Studios for Alcatel). I like this one as I look at the concepts used and I see a lot of commonality in patterns used in either today’s UI’s as well as some of the future UI’s that others have through-up as well. My thinking is that if its a common collective vision it stands a greater chance of becoming reality.

(5) Fifth

I love this concept of how mainstream media like magazine can be turned into more of a interactive experience – in that no longer just static pieces of information. Kindle, iPad, Courier etc are all hinting in this space so its not that far removed from fantasy vs reality.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

 

(6) Sixth

This one is kind of weird, I kind of feel like Homer Simpson in that episode he finds his facial features in a Japanese Video and getting freaked out but excited at the same time. I don’t mind this one as it kind of goes to the extreme end on how Augmented Reality could occur should the right eyewear or face shield be built (think IRONMAN). (Thanks to: infocycde for the link)

(7) Seventh

This is the minority report come to life, and its exactly how a concept that Mark Coleran worked on in a movie suddenly appears in real life, again, FUI meets reality. Thanks Mark for the heads up on this one!

oblong’s tamper system 1801011309 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

(8) Eighth.

Cynergy Systems have put together a brilliant presentation of how a portable device meets a surface table, whilst allowing a buying style concept to occur. It makes me think that whilst everything these days is pushing to be online that with this concept a store owner can still exist, but the physical component to a store doesn’t have to exist. In that you go into a store, speak with the store owner etc and simply drag the book into your device for purchase etc. I like this concept and what’s cool also about it is the fact its already done, it’s not so much a Fantasy User Interface for the future.

(9) Ninth

.<insert your find here> If you know of other showreels like this, please send me an email or drop a comment below with the URL, as I want to build out this page to include them all. I want them like a crack addict needs a new fix.

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Can you mix UX with Agile?

Posted on by Scott Barnes
4

I’ve not decided yes or no on that question, I’ve read a lot in the past few months on the topic and I’m still not convinced or swayed either way.

Here’s my open transparent written exploration of how I am navigating this concept.

UX Design vs UI Design.

image

Its important to split a hair on this one, UI Designer in my definition is someone who can work on the aesthetics of a component whilst a UX Designer is the one who contemplates how that component is to be used by humans (I could go much deeper in this topic but another blog post for another day?)

I state this concept out loud, as when I read success on how UX + Agile came together in XYZ team, I often question what they are measuring success in terms of UX and more to the point what disciplines were in the room and what were the problems being solved. I’ve not read a lot about how the sausage was made, its more “trust me, UX + Agile works” belief system which to me is simply not scientific enough to subscribe to. I need proof of life.

The UX Scouting Model.

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There’s a number of articles written on this, but for me I call it the UX Scouting model, whereby you have a set of effort that works ahead of a sprint, its the type of work that solves the problems of UX before the engineers arrive at a point in time to start assembling.

On paper, this seems like a reasonable approach to the problem of dealing with iterative design, and I’m inclined to believe this is probably the only model I can think of that will yield a successful shipping cycle. Having said that, i think this kind of model is more suited towards a validation / mentoring of UX model than an UX problem solving exercise.

What do i mean?

I put it to all that what is occurring is a reactive iteration occurring on the software whereby you’re taking a slice of the feature catalogue and reacting to how it injects itself both technically and visually into place. This is where I think the failure points occur, as its where a seasoned UX Designer shows his/her skill set the most. The ability to foresee what’s next beyond the current iterations (ie sprint) and are also trying to forecast the next few moves ahead (heh maybe a good interview technique for a UX expert is to play chess with them).

Having this foresight is in my opinion a very rare amount of talent to have, and once that person(s) have this, getting them to also negotiate with both stakeholders and engineers on such direction could also reduce the skill pool down even further. It doesn’t stop there, as at times the engineering side of the fence line aren’t open to adjustments in thinking, as it means more time/cost to them and the project. It’s then you face the compromise concern, as once that card gets thrown into the room, its easy to bias the stakeholders or owners of the said software to side with an efficient release over an effective one.

It’s how a lot of software ends up with a degree of “false affordance” – meaning, you get packets of the software where it has a perceived level of functionality that does what it’s expected to do, but in the end it either goes un-used or un-noticed or even more so, it’s sole purpose is to placate the end user and stake holders into believing the problem was solved.

Let’s get it right next time?image

Historically, Microsoft as a company has always duke it out over the battle between function vs form, and all to often function has won out in the end – despite the highly paid talent of UX leads being in the room. The stark reality is that time/cost are a factor one cannot simply deny, and its essentially what makes UX + Agile an attractive proposition, as it means get it done, get it done early and you can always get it right in the next release.

Microsoft typically takes three shipping cycles to get it right, when I say right, I mean “good enough” which in many ways is the ready, fire, aim approach. Apple at times seem to approach the equation from a ready, aim, fire model.

They don’t always get it right, but the amount of “luck” Apple have had with their product lines over the years, can lend itself to the concept that maybe they are siding with Form over Function every time. The company presents itself as being more about the industrial design of the solutions vs the good enough approach and it probably is why they often lead with a linear model of development + release.

Does UX + Agile work inside Apple? I don’t know, I can speculate that probably it doesn’t and that the engineering side of things makes way for UX – ie Function follows Form.

Back to the point, UX + Agile is sometimes hidden under the covers of evolution, whereby the said persons can run parallel or ahead of the said development teams and are able to react according to the growth of the said feature(s). However, when the time comes for a UX refactor, does it not get pushed aside into the next major release cycle with an open promise to get it right then.

If that does occur, then is that cycle dedicated to UX refactor in its purist sense? or is it just the same rinse/repeat formula whereby you have an iterative situation unfolding.

So, UX + Agile isn’t the answer?

image

I think the concept of Agile is fine, its the execution of it that I think is where the story kind of starts to fall a little to the way side, I think from a UX standpoint you really need to outline the features ahead but do so in a way that is suited to a ready, aim, fire model. It also needs to lend itself to a dedicated chunk of time purely to refactor the function of a solution to accommodate the consistency and goals of form. Having said that, that “Form” needs to be defined early and it needs to be framed in a way that everyone involved can subscribe to easily enough (heh, the joke is on the UX itself, as in order to sell everyone on the UX vision, they in turn need to ensure its palatable enough for them to recall, thus UX sells UX ..funny)

I’ve not decided as yet that UX + Agile is a formula that works, I can’t decide that just yet as I feel we in the software industry are back to pioneering mode. We settled on a rinse/repeat formula for so long that it started to breed mediocrity in the way software is designed, developed and deployed. Given the device market has created an interesting interruption in the way we approach mundane tasks, it in itself has elevated the B2C or B2B markets in a way that forces the ideation phase of software to take more risks.

The problem isn’t with the ideation being unwieldy or requiring strict time boxing, it’s simply we may have all forgotten to add the UX tax to the software builds – meaning, costs just increased.

Cost increases aren’t swallowed well, so the reality is what is likely occurring in UX + Agile teams is that there is more of a UI Designer validating and placating the said engineering side with “Good job, keep using DataGrids” mentality vs.. a UX Designer asking that folks think differently and outside the box.

On paper, agile is fine. In practice, well, grab your UX six shooter and lets ride off into the west and see what we find out next.

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Multi-touch VJ..err..DJ…err..nevermind.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
1

I’m about 10 days out until I get my hands on my multi-touch monitor from Dell. As a result of this long wait, I’m just exploring the web tonight to see what’s out there in multi-touch land. I came across this video via vimeo (which can I just say is where all the creative people youtube their work).

image

The concept is by James Cui (VJ Fader) and what it appears to do is allow him and other VJ’s to synchronize with visuals (both for his input and the audience watching him).

I’ve been to a couple of raves in my time (17/18 yrs old) and I can see how this could definitely up the fame pool for a lot of DJ’s as my friends & I often use to joke at how stupid people were just staring at some guy move records in and out? (ie…what was the point? music was great but stare?)

This however changes everything.

faderTouch 3.0 & Audio Visual Instruments from VJFader on Vimeo.

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DataGrids are the safety blanket for bad design.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
2

I’m constantly in and out of meetings with developers who are making some pretty intense Silverlight based solutions. It’s exciting and irritating at the same time to see them having all the fun in Silverlight and all I do is give advice etc on how to fix X or approach the product from Y lense.

One consistent theme I often see a lot is the over-use of DataGrids. DataGrids are being used pretty much majority of the time to present any if not all large amounts of data and it absolutely baffles me personally as to why developers keep gravitating towards them?

I say this, mainly as you’re given a solution like Silverlight where its actually your job to simplify the end user’s experience – yet the first chance some get, “Let’s grab the ye olde DataGrid with sortable columns and snap it into place”

DataGrids have a very small niche of usage rights in my opinion when it comes towards User Experience. What I mean is, should you have a need to make your own Excel Spreadsheet, sure, I can see the need (sortable columns and all).

Otherwise, stop. Use ListBox’s instead of DataGrids.

The difference between a ListBox and a DataGrid visually is obvious – DataGrid is multiple columns, ListBox is one. The major significant mindset adjustment for a ListBox is that it dares both the developer and end user to think about the problem being solved in that current piece of software.

An example that comes to mind and is quite common is Outlook 2007.

On the left you have a tree like situation, this is your first line of defence against dense data. It essentially forces you as an end user to think in terms of contextual categories regarding your email traffic.

The next column is typically a list of emails separated based on Date (Most commonly) but again, this is your second layer of defence regarding unnecessary dense data.

Last is the body of the email itself, basically this is your main end point “ahah, now i can get down to work”.

I like to use this as one of many examples of how a DataGrid vs ListBox could go off the deep end. In this example you’ve provided the ability for the end user to both narrow their filtering (self-selection in the wild) and secondly you’ve addressed the overall problem in a way that isn’t to restrictive or requires a lot of mental processing to parse for that email sent “last week”.

It’s concept also caters to both large and small data sets, as should you have an inbox like I did when I was at Microsoft, it was pretty much 1000′s of emails a day.

Today I have smaller inbox (yay) but the problem getting access to emails from the past hasn’t changed. In this approach to UI, i’m still able to sort/parse the said emails but should the data not yield an obvious “at first glance” hunt for that email of ages past, I can enter a search term – that or – sort the data on a more contextual level (narrowing down the data ).

Search is probably the area I use the most in Outlook as i’m often going “Oh crap, Sarah sent me an email last week, it had something to do with X customer…” I then type in “Sarah X Customer” and already my hunt is narrowed and the chase begins.

You can do the same with DataGrids, don’t get me wrong. DataGrids however get quite busy and cumbersome once you go beyond 1 line of text. In that, we humans typically aren’t happy to read horizontally – it has to do with the fact we prefer to parse things vertically than horizontally and especially on wide columns. It gives the impression that its “heavy or more work” vs vertical can give you more of a feeling of being “quick to parse” (Ever wonder why news papers do this?)

Bottom line is this. DataGrids should really be left to narrow specific areas of use, typically for fiscal data that has a lot of calculations to review – that or UI’s that make use of 1 line of text much like Apple’s email client does below.

Having said all of that, I still often see teams of folks praise the DataGrids that have heirachy’s of sub-grids as a “better way” to represent the data. It can be quite frustrating to see this, but I simply take it on the chin, take a deep breathe and try and sway them to focusing on the said problem from a different angle where the mandate/objective is to simplify the density of the data.

Less is more when it comes to UI, parsing large amounts of information gets tedious and is more prone to human error than user interfaces that handle a lot of the heavy lifting for you.


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Controlling your Silverlight Installation Experience.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
Reply

I’ve been doing plug-in development & design for many years, and often I’ve seen many a battle around this space. It typically starts with ubiquity, once that is overcome it then settles down at abandonment rates and from there the curse of the dreaded plug-in ends.

The reality however, no matter what plug-in you choose is that in actual fact ubiquity isn’t the sign of displeasure, it typically starts with how the entire package is presented to the end user.

Fatigue Point 1 – Do I want the full Experience?

image If you build a Silverlight experience for example, and all you put in place of the viewer whom doesn’t have Silverlight is the typical generic “Get Silverlight” medallion. This will basically be your first failure point  (depending on the power of word-of-mouth).

As put yourself in the end users shoes. I’ve arrived at a site, and it has nothing but a “Get Silverlight” button.

Well, what does that mean? and more to the point do I really want to go beyond the button? why..why should I get Silverlight!

Irrespective of what plug-in you choose to build with, this initial hurdle is not just solely related to the plug-in but more to the point around what it is you’re trying to entice the end user to actually experience.

Have you explained what it is you have to offer clearly? is there a sense of reward for them should they agree that getting Silverlight is worth it.



Fatigue Point 2-  Do I want to install?

image It’s easy to push away and declare ubiquity as being the sole reason as to why any plug-in fails or succeeds. It’s only 1/3 of the battle ahead, as there is more beyond the “Get Plug-in XYZ”.

For instance, Installing plug-in have become a tax we willingly pay each day online, often enough in your lifespan online you’ve most likely downloaded plug-in like Flash, QuickTime etc approx 8-9 times a year. All users online do it, so the old myth around folks being plug-in fatigued is actually not a reality at all.



Fatigue Point 3 – Do I want to stick around.

image The final but crucial point of fatigue is, well, do I actually want to stick around?

If you have a 5mb+ payload (ie .XAP file) the end user has to download and all they want is the first 100k, think about the tax you’re imposing on the end user.

Splash Screens are effective here, you want to keep the end user locked on the job at hand and re-assure them the experience is highly worth the wait.

It’s also important to note your mileage in terms of broadband access online will vary and despite the fact I’m sitting on a 30mbps cable link at home others aren’t on high speed broadband.

Have a read of this great article:

Summary.

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Think about your end users pain, understand that ubiquity is definitely a hard psychological barrier to overcome, at times people put to much stock in the idea of what success here looks like. They also don’t pay attention to their abandonment rates as they should, and watching people drop off can mean many things (i.e. is your intended experience built for the right audience? I’d argue a RIA based blog isn’t appropriate, given HTML is simply just better suited – unless, you’re doing something more compelling than the HTML iteration has to offer).

We’ll explore more of this going forward soon, as we’ve got an upcoming announcement around this space. I just wanted to highlight early the notion that having a Silverlight experience for an external site has many fatigue points associated to it, and it’s something we should all take responsibility to ensure is enticing beyond the off the shelf default experience.

It’s not just solely about “do they have plug-in yes/no”.

We’ll continue to partner with OEM providers and grow Silverlight installs to reduce the ubiquity barrier of entry, however it’s still up to you to handle the rest, no matter what plug-in you adopt.

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RIA: 10 Questions on Icon Design – I ask our Microsoft Design folks to respond.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
2

image

I have an Icon fetish that is disturbingly wrong. In that I collect them, horde them and would happily spend Microsoft’s good hard earned money on as many of them as I can find – if allowed.

Yet, what makes Icon’s so special? in that why do they enhance an applications user interface to the point where it almost is lost without them. Why does Microsoft and Apple spend a lot of money and time ensuring that menu navigation and icon’s are done in a manner that’s not only attractive to the eye, but enhance a users experience?

Well, I decided to ask our UX folks, the same folks whom chose Icons for our operating systems, software applications and so on. I had one intent, to get to the bottom of this whole Icon business and more to see where Icon’s can play a role in tomorrows RIA. RIA is going to embrace the icon market, something I have now doubt and so with this, onto the top 10 questions with Frank Bisono & Brittnie Hervey (UX demi-gods).

Top 10 Questions for the Icon Ninja’s here at Microsoft.

Q1. What is an icon?, in that we all see them daily in software but what does the icon represent to the end user? 

Brittnie: An icon represents an action a user will take.

Frank: For our purposes, an icon would be a graphical representation (small picture or object) for a file, application or command (action).  For the end user it should be an easy way to quickly identify what product they are in and what action they could take on a given object.

Q2. When you choose an icon, what is the process that you go through in selecting the right one?

Brittnie:         In Vista there is set usages for every icon that we define when created.  We align the concept of the functionality the user is taking to the best visual representation we can get based on elements rather than words.

Frank:          So generally you don’t just have the luxury of choosing a pre-existing icon here.  For most products or features, we create a custom icon.  On the server side, this means literally THOUSANDS of icons.  We follow the same process as Brittnie described above.  That generally means meeting with a PM and translating the description for this icon into a graphical representation.  Sometimes we have existing elements that we re-use to create an icon, other times, it’s a completely custom concept and we start from scratch.

Q3. Microsoft has released some guidelines around designing icon’s, do you feel that the icon design community adhere to these? 

Brittnie: I believe it depends on group and situation.  Our current guidelines do not map 1 to 1 to what MS sets as guidelines.  I think we adhere when appropriate.  This is a harder question to answer.

Frank:          If you mean the design community OUTSIDE of Microsoft, well – it all depends.  We haven’t put out the most robust set of guidelines I’ve seen, but they are generally a pretty good start.  The main problem I have seen with regards to icons is that sometimes the importance of an icon is overlooked.  There are the obvious visual aspects of creating an icon, but then there are also things to consider such as geopolitical issues that can come back to haunt a developer or studio.  The last thing you want to do is insult a particular culture with the use of an icon that has a detrimental meaning to them.  I’ve also seen updates to products that continue to use icons developed for an older platform like XP.  If you are targeting your application to run in Vista, then you need to refresh the icons to match the visual style we have set for Vista (the aero style).  The last thing I’ll note is that all too often I’ve seen folks take a shortcut and use an icon designed for use at say 256×256 and they scale it down to fit a 16×16 block.  Or even worse, they upscale an icon.  That just doesn’t fly.  There are a number of reasons why you can’t just shrink an icon in Photoshop and call it a day, and the same goes for sizing an icon up.  At the end of the day, it just doesn’t look good.

Q4. I’ve always said that the icon market is ripe for the picking giving the technology going forward, where do you foresee this market going and is there room for icons in formats such as XAML? 

Brittnie:         I foresee icons becoming less important and the UI itself becoming more self explanatory.  With that being said I don’t think icons will ever go completely away, just less needed. 

Frank:          The icon market is definitely getting more advanced.  We are now seeing icons as large as 512×512 directly in the UI and with much richer detail than ever.  I totally see a future with dynamic icons that change as the application’s state changes.  As the graphics engines in our OS get better, so too will the use of icons and the value they can bring to the OS or application.  That’s just one example.  As far as XAML, there’s definitely something to be said there as well.  Right now if you take an icon created in Illustrator, you could export that as XAML and drop that right into code using Expression Blend. After all, a vector is nothing more than a mathematical computation rendered as a graphic right?  But another way to drop that into XAML is by defining a brush in Blend with an icon image and then using that brush in Blend (this is for when you only have a bitmap icon for example).  The “icon” does ok at scaling, but there is room for improvement using that technique.  XAML is definitely going to present some interesting possibilities moving forward with WPF applications.  We are still WAY early in defining that, but as we move more towards a WPF based environment, you will see more attention being given to XAML Icons.

Q5. I have an icon fetish, i just seem to store them, 1000′s of them. Do you also have hordes of icons tucked away on your hard drive and what is it you look for in the design styles?

Brittnie: No, I do not have many different icons I store on my hard drive but we do have thousands tucked away on a sever/share.  The design style is the same for all the icons we create, as we have the Vista guidelines we follow.  I only collect those icons. J

Frank:          Well, I’m not going to lie here, I am a total icon fanboi  :) I literally have TENS of THOUSANDS of them hoarded away on my drives at home.  I’ve been collecting them for years.  I just love customizing my desktop and folders using custom icons.

Q6. OSX and Windows Vista have a unique design style to both, and lately the "Glass Effect" plays a role in design style(s). Why is this so? and do you have any thoughts on the next upcoming fashionable style? 

Brittnie: I believe this is because it is a new visual style that you don’t see in a lot of places, and it gives the icons an extra bang.  They feel more like a piece of art work then they do just a simple icon and glass adds some elegance.  I can’t predict the next trend, but if I had to guess, I would think it would be a hybrid between the MSN style of icons and the current Vista style, giving a little less importance to the icon, and more importance to the UI.

Frank:          Hmmm, the glass factor.  Yeah, this is all the rage and trend lately, but I think we’ll see some evolution in the coming years.  The glass thing is just a little too shiny and a little too frosty in places and I think you will start seeing that get toned down a bit.  The big effect there is transparency.  Like anything else though, too much is a bad thing.  I would totally tell you what I think the next trend in icons will be, but I’d rather keep that a secret and let you see it when we release it.

Q7. What is the biggest mistake a developer or designer can do in choosing an Icon for their applications? 

Brittnie:         In our world they could use the icon incorrectly, which then breaks the users understanding of what that icon does.  Windows, Windows Live, & IE all use the same library of icons so using them correctly helps the user to immediately identify what action is going to be taken when the icon is clicked, thus enhances the User experience.   The second thing they could do wrong is size an icon up from a smaller file, pixilation then occurs in the image.

Frank:          Totally in sync with Brittnie here.  An example of using an icon incorrectly would be choosing an icon that has traditionally had a different metaphor to mean something else in your UI.  This is BAD…REAL BAD.  It’s hard to retrain people to think about something in a different way and if your use of an icon gives the user a result other than the intended result because of a bad metaphor, well then you just hosed the usability of your product.  Metaphors in general can be a bad thing and should be avoided unless it is universally known.  You have to think about localization here and what the icon could potentially mean in another culture.

Q8. What advice would you give to the design market around producing a set of icons? given that most software vendors require a themed approach? 

Brittnie:         I guess the advice I would give would depend on what style they were trying to create an icon in.  If they were trying to create an icon in the Vista style I would say the most important thing to do is work closely with the library owner so they can understand what is already built, and how to visual represent something that needs to map into our icons, and to make sure the style guide is being followed.

Frank:          For designers outside of MSFT, the #1 thing I’d say they need to know their target audience.  Sounds stupid, but if none of your users are running Vista (which we all know they should right? J), then you shouldn’t be using the Aero theme for your icons or your UI will look like butt.  This is where proper research comes into play.  Know the limitations of your product.  Think about WHERE the icon will be used, platform, form factor, etc. (mobile device or a huge honkin projection screen in a NOC center).  Think about the environment in which your icon will be seen (potential lighting situations, types of display technology).  We all like to think we are designing icons that will be used on a Windows box in a home or office environment, but the reality is that your icon could end up in a place you never expected it to.  You have to think about a lot of factors when choosing the right design.  Think ahead, anticipate the unexpected and ask a lot of questions.

Q9. Icon’s typically have two states associated to them (eg: recycle bin, full/empty). Yet some (Audim on OSX for example) are now using animation to represent status change, what advice would you give around keeping that from getting out of hand? 

Brittnie: I would say each situation needs to be addressed case by case.  I avoid using animation or multiple states of icons unless there is a status to an icon that needs to be represented for its functionality.    I think the cost of making second/third icons and the additional cost of animating those icons will keep us from doing it too often.  That is usually where I push back from when an icon of this type is requested.

Frank:          I would actually argue that it ISN’T typical for an icon to have 2 states.  There are definitely times when this is the case however.  Status change and animation are two separate things.  You can have one without the other.  I think that having status change is an effective way of providing feedback to a user for certain things.  Animation is where things would tend to get out of control if not done correctly.  In the case of an object that is synchronizing something or transferring data, I can see the value of adding animation to an icon because it’s representing that there is a task in progress. It’s live feedback letting the user know something is happening. But gratuitous animation for the sake of animation is where you start getting into the cheese factor.  How long did those flaming .gifs and websites with music last back in 1995?  Yeah…

Q10. Why can’t we have a universal icon format that fits all platforms, devices and other digital surfaces. 

Brittnie: I think it would be AMAZING to have all platforms support then same file type/format, but I don’t know if this would ever be possible considering the constraints on the web that don’t exist in the OS.

Frank:                   I also think that the idea of a universal icon format would be ideal.  Unfortunately we live in a world where everyone wants to be king and nobody wants to concede to the other player.  You can say that about almost any format on the market.  Blue Ray vs. HD DVD /  PDF vs. XPS /  RAW vs. DNG, the list goes on.  Then you have the issue of maintaining backwards compatibility and re-engineering existing apps to take advantage of a universal format.  Then who owns it?  I think people are just set in their ways and on the grand scheme of things, a universal icon format isn’t at the top of the list of priorities for most folks.  It’s a shame really, but I guess that’s life in the 21st century.

Conclusion

I think that there is going to be a very lucrative market ahead for Icon Designers, especially as RIA begins to heat up more and more as technology gets advanced. Themed Icon designers, and quality ones will be in high demand along side UI designers – in fact – one could argue that a good UI designer for applications should come in armed with Icon Design capabilities. As you can then complete the entire themed experience in a way that others may not be able to.

image

XAML, is also something in which I think there is could have stronger potential. The ability to transfer icons back and forth amongst designer & developer workflow will also work towards reduction of having to design icon’s for different scales (16,32,48 etc).

This is also something which probably doesn’t get discussed enough, in that Microsoft Community can offer a lot of maturity in this space going forward. We have exceptionally talented, intelligent and extremely focused User Experience folks on our ethos. I expect as time passes we will continue to see some of this thought leadership and maturity help shape the Microsoft version of “Next Web”.

Also we have  icon design guideline(s) which others may find useful:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511280.aspx

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